Audi tops test day at Sebring

Posted by March 15, 2013No comments

SEBRING, FL — Alan McNish and the No. 2 Audi R-18 Hybrid went from the outhouse to the penthouse in the course of eight hours of work Thursday at the storied Sebring track where Audi has brought a team of two cars as a part of the USA Farewell Tour.

McNish, out in the morning session, had a shunt on cold tires before completing even a single lap. Apparently the cold tires spun when he was going through turn 10, putting the car into the wall. While there was a goodly amount of body dammage to the car, the tub survived as did McNish and the No. 2 Audi R18 e-tron quattro with teammate Tom Kristensen at the wheel toured the circuit at 1:46.660 (126.233 mph) for top time in the evening session.

The time was just 0.026 seconds faster than the No. 1 car with Benoit Treluyer at the wheel. Third place in the P1 category went to Lucas Luhr in the Muscle Milk Honda HPD ARX 03c. Luhr was about three-quarters of a second behind the fastest Audi. Based on the times posted by all of the Audi drivers, it would appear that both teams are ready for qualifying and the race.

This is the last time that the vaunted Audi P1 Team will visit the Sebring Track, where they have had dominate performances over the last decade. With the merging of the ALMS and Grand-AM series, there will no longer be a class for the Audi. Although the team will visit the World Endurance Championship (WEC) round in Austin, TX in September, this indeed may be the last time the Audi P1 cars turn a race lap at Sebring.

The Sebring race also gives the Audi Team a tune-up for the start of the WEC season that kicks off at Silverstone in the UK the weekend of April 12-14. Sebring will give the Audi team a good test (as it has already) with a very serious challenge coming from the Toyota team that was the equal of the Audis in the latter half of the WEC season in 2012.

In the GT class, there was less than a half a second between the top three with American Muscle showing the way as two Corvettes C6 ZR1s posted the top two times.

There is one test session Friday morning with qualifying Friday afternoon. The race kicks off Saturday morning at 10:30 am Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

Prototype 2 (P2) Top 3
• Ryan Briscoe – No. 551 Level 5 Motorsports HPD ARX-03b – 1:52.138 (120.066 mph)
• Ryan Hunter-Reay – No. 552 Level 5 Motorsports HPD ARX-03b – 1:52.735 (119.431 mph)
• David Brabham – No. 01 Extreme Speed Motorsports HPD ARX-03b – 153.133 (119.010 mph)

Grand Touring (GT) Top 3
• Oliver Gavin – No. 4 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 – 2:00.282 (111.937 mph)
• Jordan Taylor – No. 3 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 – 2:00.406 (111.822 mph)
• Matteo Malucelli – No. 62 Risi Competizione Ferrari 458 Italia – 2:00.736 (111.516 mph)

Prototype Challenge presented by Continental Tire (PC) Top 3
• David Ostella – No. 52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports ORECA FLM09 – 1:55.662 (116.408 mph)
• Pierre Kaffer – No. 81 Dragon Speed Mishumotors ORECA FLM09 – 1:56.467 (115.604mph)
• Colin Braun – No. 05 Composite Resources CORE autosport ORECA FLM09 – 1:56.656 (115.416 mph)

GT Challenge (GTC) Tire Top 3
• Spencer Pumpelly – No. 45 Flying Lizard Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 Cup – 2:06.376 (106.539 mph)
• Andy Lally – No. 27 Dempsey Del Piero Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup – 2:06.570 (106.376 mph)
• Jeroen Bleekemolen – No. 22 Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup – 2:06.721 (106.249 mph)

Muscle Milk continues dominance with Lime Rock victory

Posted by August 19, 2012No comments

LAKEVILLE, CT — Rob Dyson’s Lola B12/60 Mazda LMP1 won the battle, but it was the Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a Honda of Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graph that won the war at the Lime Rock American Le Mans series Northwest Grand Prix, as they came from four laps down during the race for the victory.

Rob Smith finished qualifying with an equally entertaining top lap and pole position for the Mazda, out dueling the Honda  by a mere .102 seconds. On race day when electrical issues plaqued the Muscle Milk sponsored Honda, it appeared as if the race was Smith and Dyson’s to lose.

Unfortunately for the Mazda team, on their “home track” (Poukeepsie, NY is home base) they did lose the race to a hard charging bonzai performance by Lurh and Graph that earned for them a nearly 13 second victory over their chief rivals, their third straight in the ALMS this year.

P2 class honors went to Level 5’s Christophe Bouchut and Scott Tucker, who led outright for more than 30 minutes and held off a hard-charging Conquest Endurance Morgan-Nissan of Martin Plowman for the class win.

“Dr. Mc Dreamy”, Patrick Dempsey, scored his first ALMS podium finish, teaming with Joe Foster in the No. 27 Dempsey Racing Lola B12/80 Judd to finish third in class.

In the GT catagorie, it was another dog fight to the finish with Jörg Bergmeister and Patrick Long earning victory for Flying Lizard Motorsports in a fantastic fight with Corvette Racing and Extreme Speed Motorsports. Bergmeister celebrated his 100th ALMS start with his sixth win in seven Lime Rock races. Bergmeister held off a stern challenge from a pair of Corvette C6 ZR1s.

The ‘Patriot’: a once and future dream

Posted by June 16, 2012No comments

LE MANS, France — Today when we hear the name “Patriot” used in the context of the automotive world we think of the newly released Chrysler Jeep product. But in the early to mid 1990s it was a Chrysler race car that was designed to go Le Mans and compete for the prestige that comes with winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Patriot was not only a car that was designed to go Le Mans but it was also a hybrid design that unfortunately never saw the track in anger.
The brain-child of Francois J. Castaing, who had been brought to Chrysler from Renault to change the way the company thought about car design. He was more successful on that tact than getting the Patriot off the ground — or should we sat to the race track. Castaing, who became the vice-president of vehicle engineering at Chrysler and was the brainchild behind the successful Chrysler LH series of cars  (Intrepid, Concorde, Vision, LHS, New Yorker)  was well ahead of his time with the Patriot.

Built on a standard race chassis of the day from the now defunct Raynard chassis builder for the then World Sports Car (WSC) class. But the chassis was about all that was even close to standard as the car was suppose to have  a have a “generation station” built into it that would use a natural gas turbine to drive a pair of alternators to which would power a 525 V AC induction motor.

While today battery technology is one of the limiting factors (or at the very least bottlenecks) in a truly successful electric vehicle, in the mid 1990s there was not way to store this energy efficiently. So Chrysler engineers turned to the flywheel. The team at Auburn Hills looked to the flywheel to provide the “oomph” needed to drive the car out of the corners with short bursts of acceleration.

This flywheel system was designed to turn at 58,000 rpm in a vacuum housing made of carbon fiber. However, in dyno testing of the system two full-tilt implosions of the flywheel put a halt to development of the project. Engineers did not think that they could easily protect the driver in the event of an flywheel failure and that was the end of this dream.

The Patriot never did run with full drive-train and while there are photos of the car on the track these were made by towing the car on the track and then retouching these photos to remove the tow rope.

Castain is quoted as saying,”We’ve learned a lot about hybrid technology and that we are stopping doesn’t mean we failed.”

A very complete view of the project with pictures and more details is found here.

 

 

 

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